It’s no secret that Google’s algorithm is largely, well, a secret. While digital marketing pros have a pretty good idea of what the key factors are in determining rankings on SERPs, there are some factors that have marketers divided. One of those factors is how social media may or may not impact SEO. Most marketers (ourselves included) believe that social does in fact have indirect impacts on a business’s SEO – one of the many reasons we think it is a valuable marketing tool no matter what your products or services are.
What is Social SEO?
Social SEO is the use of social media as a way to indirectly increase your visibility on search engines by improving your organic search ranking. While social media is not a direct ranking factor for search engines, social signals, like shares and comments, help to increase your brand trust and loyalty, which then increases your brand awareness and exposure. All of these factors help to indirectly boost your website traffic and visibility online.
8 Ways That Social can Impact SEO
Social Media Increases Visibility and Links
It has long been established that backlinking has a big influence on SERPs; the more backlinks you have, the higher your ranking. When people share or repost the content from your social pages, this increases your backlinks – and makes them more diversified. Both of these increase your authority in the eyes of the search algorithm.
Social Can Help Improve SEO Ranking Signals
When you use social posts to link to your search engine optimized pages, you increase the amount of traffic and time that people spend on the page, and lower your bounce rate.
Posting on Social Gets Content Indexed Faster
Adding or refreshing a page on your website? Share it on social media to get it indexed by search engines more quickly.
Social Data Can Help You Improve Your SEO Content
Your social audience makes a great sounding board for new ideas. Pay attention to what posts get the most interaction, and use them to design your SEO content. The more people interact with it, the more likely it is that they enjoy it and are willing to spend the time on your site to read more.
Social Media Helps You Identify Your Audience
Experimenting with content interaction isn’t the only way your social audience can help you out. They also present a vital opportunity to find out exactly who your audience is, what they like, what they need, and more. All of this information is extremely helpful for designing highly targeted, highly relevant audiences for PPC or other display advertising.
Social Media Can Help You Generate New Content Ideas
Pay attention to comments and questions that you receive on social media – and then write SEO content to answer them. Chances are if one person has a certain question or concern about your business, others will as well. Addressing these via content helps to both increase brand trust and website traffic. Win-win.
Social Helps Your SERPs for Branded Queries
Have issues with competitors ranking above you in searches for your brand name? Social media can help with that – but the catch is that the pages have to be optimized. Make sure that they are filled out with all of your relevant business information, and have SEO keywords in the text. This helps to ensure that your social pages will rank on SERPs, and help to give you leverage over your competitors.
Social Drives Traffic While You Wait for SEO
SEO can be an uphill task for new businesses. Organic rankings take time to build up with SEO. But having optimized and active social pages can help to build up quality website traffic. You can do this by posting SEO content to your pages, and even running social ads.
So take our advice: take the time to build up a solid social following if you want another edge against the competition in SERPs.
Interested in boosting your SEO in other ways, or running social media campaigns to increase engagement or website traffic? Contact us today. At Gulf Coast Web, we have over 25 years of experience in managing all types of digital design and marketing campaigns – even for companies outside of our immediate area. Our staff consists of highly-trained digital design advertising professionals who are both passionate about their jobs and excel at what they do. Contact us today to book a consultation with our team. We look forward to outlining exactly how we can help you grow your business with our digital media agency services.